Occupy Wall Street: Dead in 213 Days

Based on the wave of recent reports detailing the declining interest in Occupy Wall Street, let’s just bite the bullet and publish the final obit: Occupy Wall Street, Dead, 213 Days Old.

At the University of North Carolina, The Daily Tar Heel recently observed, “Occupy Chapel Hill-Carrboro meeting attendees once packed a plaza, but these days they barely surround a coffee table.”

Other encampments around the country are in similar decline. While Occupy New Haven recently celebrated its six-month anniversary, the encampment is on its last legs. This despite a dose of legal life-support it received from a federal injunction overturning an earlier decision in which judges sided with the city in their efforts to evict the protesters.

A prominent member of Occupy New Haven has even joined city officials in calling for an end to the occupation. “The longer we stay [encamped] on the Green, the more damage we do to our cause,” he wrote in a statement.

Ultimately, OWS failed because it didn’t channel all the excitement it generated into political action. In a democracy it takes “50% plus one” of the populace to bring about change. In fact, OWS earned the opposite of“50% plus one”among the citizenry.

The movement could have ended differently. Whether conservatives like it or not, the main thrust of the Occupy movement dovetailed well with the feelings around the country that something was amiss after the taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts were followed by a jobless recovery.